Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): D. Terence Langendoen
Reviewed work(s):
Essays on Form and Interpretation by Noam Chomsky
Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 75, No. 5 (May, 1978), pp. 270-279
Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2025966
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Herder's argument is quite different from Vico's, but, like Vico,

he does not seem to have in mind a dualism between natural science and humane studies. Reading Herder's introduction to his On
Knowing and Feeling of the Human Soul 7 or his critical remarks
on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason,8 I agree fully with Berlin's introductory statement that Herder "opposed a radical distinction between the method appropriate for the study of physical nature and
that called for by the changing and developing spirit of man" (145).
This anti-dualistic position of Herder's seems to call for a modification of his contribution to the emergence of nineteenth-century
historicism. Unfortunately, Berlin does not pay much attention to
those elements in Herder's thought. He thus loses the opportunity
to throw some new light on the intrinsic philosophical problems of
historical hermeneutics.
In this regard, neither Vico nor Herder seems to be a forerunner
or a founder of a historicist detachment of the humane studies from
science, as Berlin claims. Rather than a historical legitimation of
this dualism, they seem to intend a general theory of science which
does not try to subject one discipline to the requirements of another
(as the objections of science to hermeneutics do). Such a general
theory tries instead to comprehend them all.
A revival of interest in both these eighteenth-century thinkers is
under way, and Berlin's studies will without doubt considerably
advance it. This revival could and should inspire contemporary
scholars and philosophers to guide their reflections beyond the
dualism of Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften, our heritage from the nineteenth century, toward a new discussion of the
relation between science and hermeneutics.
ECKHARD KESSLER

University of Munich
Essays on Form and Interpretation. NOAM CHOMSKY. New York and
Amsterdam: Elsevier North-Holland, 1977. 216 p. $12.95.
For the past quarter-century, Noam Chomsky has been an (if not
the) acknowledged leader in the business of devising and revising
6 See De antiquissima i, 1, 2; p. 136.

Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele, 1774.

Vernunft, 1799. See,
for instance, Siimtliclie Werke, B. Suphan, ed. (Berlin, 1877-1913), vol. xxi,
ch. 10, P. 293.
7

8 Verstand und Erfahrung: Eine Metakritik der reinen

0022-362X/78/7505/0970$01.00

C 1978 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

BOOK REVIEWS

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linguistic theories. The book under review (hereafter referred to as

Essays) contains four articles previously published between 1973
and 1976, together with an introduction which states that "[t]he
essays that follow fall within the framework of the so-called 'extended standard theory' (EST)" (1). EST is an outgrowth of the
linguistic theory that Chomsky presented in Aspects of the Theory
of Syntax,' which has since come to be known as "standard theory"
(ST).2 When EST was first developed, it was held to differ from ST
in only one major respect, namely in the way that the syntactic and
semantic components of a grammar are related to one another.3 In
ST, it is assumed that:
... the semanticinterpretationof a sentence depends only on its lexical items and the grammaticalfunctions and relations representedin
the underlyingstructuresin which they appear.4
In EST, on the other hand:
. . . semanticinterpretationis held to be determinedby the pair (deep
structure,surfacestructure). . . , rather than by deep structurealone;
further,it is proposedthat insofaras grammaticalrelationsplay a role
in determining meaning, it is the grammaticalrelations of the deep
structurethat are relevant (as before), but that such matters as scope
of "logical elements" and quantifiers,coreference,focus and certain
kinds of presupposition,and certain other properties,are determined
by rules that take surface structure . . . into account.5
1 Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1965; hereafter referred to as Aspects.
2 Both the names 'standardtheory' and 'extended standard theory' are due to

Chomsky;see his Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar (The Hague:

Mouton, 1972),hereafter referred to as Studies, pp. 66, 134.
3 The other theoretical innovations that Chomsky introduced following the
publication of Aspects and prior to the original appearance of the articles anthologized in Essays (for example, the "lexicalist hypothesis" and the "X-bar
notation"; see p. 5) do not count as revisions of ST so much as refinements of it.
4 Aspects, p. 136. In a footnote to this passage (224), Chomsky qualifies it
in a way that indicates that, even as he was writing Aspects, he was not entirely
convinced of the correctness of ST on this point. He writes: "As it stands, this
For example, it seems clear that the
claim seems to me somewhat too strong....
order of 'quantifiers' in surface structure sometimes plays a role in semantic
interpretation." Although, later in the same footnote, he undoes this qualification by indicating how phenomena involving the order of quantifiers could be
handled within ST, he was not persuaded by his own counterargument, as his
testimony in Reflections on Language (New York: Pantheon, 1975), hereafter
referred to as Reflections, indicates: "My own version of the standard theory was
qualified in that I suggested that some aspects of meaning are determined by
surface structure. By the time that [Aspects] appeared, I had become convinced
that this was true to a significant extent" (239).
5 Studies, P. 134. By "take surface structure . . . into account," it is clear that
Chomsky had in mind something stronger, such as "are determined at the level
of surface structure."

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However, there is another important difference between Chomsky's position in Aspects and that of his later work, regarding semantics. Crucial to ST is the thesis that semantic representations
(in the form of "readings" of senses of sentences) are constructed by
purely formal rules of grammar.6 In Studies, however, Chomsky expresses doubt that semantic representations can be fully determined
by grammatical rule. He writes:
Thus one might argue that nonlinguistic beliefs, intentions of the
speaker,and other factors enter into the interpretationof utterances
in so intimate . . . a fashion that it is hopeless and misguided to at-

tempt to represent independently the "purely grammatical"component of meaning, the various "readings"of expressionsin the sense
of . . . the standard theory, and the relation between such readings

and a syntacticstructure(67).7
In Essays, Chomsky appears to have concluded that this doubt is
justified.8 To determine full semantic representations of sentences,
he argues, it is necessary to consider certain matters of fact and belief, in addition to the representations of those sentences that are
provided by a grammar. He supposes, however, that certain aspects
of semantic representation are strictly determined by rules of grammar, and the system of representation of those aspects he calls "logical form" (LF).9 In other words, Chomsky now contends that there
are two levels of semantic representation. One, the level of logical
form, is determined by rules of grammar that he calls "rules of
semantic interpretation SI1-" (195). The other, the level of "fuller"
6 Thus Aspects, pp. 161/2: "It is clear, as Katz and Fodor have emphasized,
that the meaning of a sentence is based on the meaning of its elementary parts
and the manner of their combination."
7 On the other hand, Chomsky was not and is not skeptical about the ability
of rules of grammar to determine fully the syntactic representations of sentences
(in particular, the ability of the grammar to distinguish between syntactically
well- and ill-formed sentences), despite the fact that one could question "whether
it makes sense to speak of the well-formedness of sentences in isolation, removed
from all assumptions about the nature of the world" (Studies, p. 121). He points
out that "'[w]ell-formedness' is a theoretical term. We are free to define it so
that it takes its place within a sensible theory" (ibid.); and then he proceeds to
define it so that it "takes its place" within the syntactic component of a grammar. Why, then, does he not choose to do something similar with the theoretical
term 'semantic representation'? It would appear, in fact, that the methodological assumptions of Aspects, which he says continue to underlie his present work
(Essays, p. 1), would demand that he do so.
8 In Essays, as well as in Reflections, Chomsky continues to write as if the
matter were technically still open, but, from the over-all tone of his discussions,
it is clear that he believes that the matter is settled. See Essays, p. 196, and
Reflections, pp. 104/5, for passages in which Chomsky lets his customary caution slip.
9 Essays, pp. 5, 36/7, 165/6; Reflections, p. 105.

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semantic interpretation, is determined by rules that are not part

of grammar, called rules of semantic interpretation SI-2, which
operate on representations in LF "along with other cognitive representations" (195/6).10
What aspects of semantic representation belong in LF? Chomsky
tells us that "[t]he extension of this concept remains to be determined" (166), but from his discussions, both in Essays and in Reflections, we can conclude that LF for Chomsky includes such information as the scope and interpretation of logical constants and
quantifiers, indications of necessary coreference and noncoreference
(the latter Chomsky calls "disjoint reference"), of what elements are
in "focus," and of what "thematic relations" 11 hold.12 Except for
the indication of thematic relations, LF contains only those aspects
of meaning which Chomsky had already indicated he believes are
determined on the basis of surface structure alone.'3 However, although thematic relations are said to be defined at the level of deep
structure, they can also be determined at the level of surface structure, provided that the theory of syntactic transformations (as spelled
out in ST or in early versions of EST) is modified so that the position from which a constituent is moved by a transformation comes
to be occupied by an unpronounced pronoun-like element, called a
"trace" (symbolized t), which is interpreted by SI-i rules as a variable bound by the moved constituent.'4 Since this modification of
transformational theory is motivated, according to Chomsky, by independent syntactic considerations,'5 it can be assumed that all in10 See also p. 166 and Reflections, pp. 104/5.
11 By "thematic relations," Chomsky means those grammatical relations which
are determined at the level of deep structure.
12 Essays, pp. 9/10, 16/7, 192-205; Reflections, pp. 93-105.
13 In Essays, p. 35, Chomsky also takes the semantic relations between such
pairs of words as murder and assassinate and uncle and male "to be expressible
in terms that are not drawn from the theory of syntactic forms and categories
or the world of fact or belief." That is, such relations are also expressible at
the level of LF. However, not all semantic relations that hold between pairs of
words are so expressible, since Chomsky appears to agree with Hilary Putnam
that "'natural kinds' terms . . . cannot be provided with 'dictionary entries' that
ignore matters of fact and belief" (Essays, p. 36), and, consequently, with W. V.
Quine that "analyticity will not always be distinguished from shared belief"
(Essays, p. 37). In any event, since words appear in surface-structure representations, such semantic relations among words that are grammatically determined
are determinable at the level of surface structure.
14 The variable is said to be bound much as the variable associated with a
reflexive or reciprocal pronoun is bound by the antecedent of that pronoun; see
Essays, pp. 9, 179.
15 Some of these considerations are discussed in Essays; see pp. 75/6, 131, 135/6,
180/1, 187-189. But, as Chomsky points out, "[t]he trace theory too is controversial and not without its problems" (76).

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formation necessary for the determination of LF is present at the

level of surface structure. In short, that "[s]urface structure determines LF" (194).16
Chomsky's presentation of the evolution of his ideas from Aspects
to Essays makes it appear that each of his formulations of linguistic
theory developed organically from its immediate predecessor: that
ST gave way to early EST with the addition of surface structures as
input to the rules of semantic interpretation; and that early EST
gave way to later EST 17 by the removal of deep structures as input
to those rules. However, as was pointed out above, Chomsky also
along the way revised the notion of semantic interpretation. The
semantic component of a grammar written in conformity to ST
yields senses of sentences as output, where the sense of a sentence is
the proposition it expresses.lS The semantic component (rules of
SI-1) of a grammar written in conformity to present-day EST yields
a set of structures (logical forms) that cannot be directly compared
with the set of structures that represent senses of sentences, since on
the one hand certain information is missing in logical forms that is
present in senses of sentences (for example, information about the
meaning of "natural kinds" terms; see fn 13), and on the other
hand certain information is present in logical forms that is missing
in senses of sentences (for example, information about what is in
"focus" 19). Nor can the senses of sentences be identified with the
output of the rules of SI-2, since the senses contain only enough
information to determine role in "semantic inference" 20 and conditions of possible use, whereas the output of the rules contains all
information necessary "to determine role in inference [generally],
conditions of appropriate use, etc." (166).
As the passage just quoted shows, Chomsky, in Essays, espouses a
"use theory of meaning," 21 from which it follows that no formal
See also Reflections, pp. 96, 115-117.
Called "revised extended standard theory" (REST) by Robert Fiengo, "On
Trace Theory," Linguistic Inquiry, viii, 1 (Winter 1977): 53.
18 If the sentence is unambiguous. If it is ambiguous, then each of its
mean16

17

ings is a sense.

19 See Jerrold J. Katz, Semantic Theory (New York: Harper & Row, 1972),
pp. 425/6.
20 Where "semantic inference" is to be distinguished from "inference" by excluding deductive inference; see Katz, op. cit., pp. 190/1.
21 As he acknowledges (43), prior to the period immediately preceding work
on Aspects, Chomsky held a use theory of meaning. It would appear that he
returned to such a theory shortly upon completion of Aspects, and certainly by
the time that he wrote the following passage (Studies, pp. 67/8): "Or consider
such a sentence as I am not against MY FATHER, only against THE LABOR
MINISTER, spoken recently by a radical Brazilian student. Knowing further

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system, and hence no generative grammar, can provide a complete

account of meaning. However, a grammar can certainly provide a
partial account of meaning-in-use, and on this very general point,
present-day proponents of ST (such as Katz) and of EST (such as
Chomsky) are in complete agreement.22 The dispute between these
two camps is focused rather on two issues. First, what domain does
the semantic component of a generative grammar account for? and
second, what is the nature of the rules of that component?
The second of these issues concerns mainly technical matters and
is, furthermore, obscured by the fact that proponents of EST have
not provided enough details about the formal nature of the rules
of semantic interpretation for a thorough comparison with ST to
be made.23Hence this issue will not be dealt with further here.
Concerning the first issue, we note that both Katz and Chomsky
appropriate the term 'logical form' to characterize the objects that
are constructed by the rules of the semantic component of a grammar.24 By their use of this term, both Chomsky and Katz commit
themselves to the claim that the entities to which the laws of logic
apply are the objects constructed by the semantic component of a
grammar. Though we may agree that what, exactly, the laws of
logic are is a matter to be determined by further research, we must
also recognize that there is a substantial degree of consensus as to
what many of those laws are. Hence we can evaluate in part what
that the speaker is the son of the labor minister, we would assign to this utterance a reading in which the emphasized phrases are coreferential. On one reading, the sentence is contradictory, but knowing the facts just cited a more natural interpretation would be that the speaker is opposed to what his father does
in his capacity as labor minister."
22 For an outline of a program to study the relation of grammatically determined meaning to meaning-in-use in ST, see Jerrold J. Katz and D. Terence
Langendoen, "Pragmatics and Presupposition," Language, L11, 1 (March 1976):
1-17.
23 Chomsky's published formulations of rules of SI-1 are extremely sketchy.
In part this reflects his belief that the statement of the rules can be kept very
simple, with the slack being taken up by various "conditions on rules" (Essays,
p. 179). In addition it reflects the fact that work on semantics within EST is
only in its early stages, and we may hope to see more detailed and less programmatic formulations appearing soon.
While the statement of rules of semantic interpretation (semantic markers for
lexical items and projection rules for combining them) in ST has been much
more rigorous, the domain dealt with by those statements is almost entirely
disjoint from that covered by the semantic-interpretation rules of EST so far
formulated.
24 For Katz's :use of this term, see "Logic and Language: An Examination of
Recent Criticisms of Intensionalism," in Keith Gunderson, ed., Language, Mind,
and Knowledge (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, VII, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975), p. 36.

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ST and LST say abotlLlogical formnby examiningg the consequenlces

of the application of accepted laws of logic to the logical forms constructed by grammars conforming to those theories.
One of the major, recurring criticisms of ST is its failure to provide an account of the scope of quantifiers and negation. The usual
way in which this criticism is put is that deep structures (the inputs
to the rules of semantic interpretation in ST) do not provide enough
information to determine what the scope relations are in certain
sentences of a language like English. In addition, it is sometimes
argued that deep structures provide the wrong information. Although the criticism may be justified, the usual ways in which it is
put are misleading. To sustain a substantive charge against ST in
the matter of scope of quantifiers and negation, one would have to
show that the logical forms constructed by grammars written in conformity to that theory do not provide an adequate basis for the application of the laws of logic relating to scope. It is insufficient
simply to point out that deep structures are inadequate, since deep
structures are not themselves logical forms. It would be more accurate to say that no worker in ST has yet to publish an account of
the logical forms of sentences containing quantifiers or negative
operators in sufficient detail that one can determine whether the
laws of logic apply to them in such a way as to give a correct account of how those sentences enter into valid arguments.
Perhaps the most important criticism to be made of the notion
of logical form in EST is that many of the distinctions it makes do
not appear to have anything to do with logic. Take, for example,
the matter of "focus." The following sentences (in which the word
receiving emphatic stress is capitalized) differ in focus, and hence,
according to Chomsky, in logical form: Amy gave BILL a car and
Amy gave Bill a CAR. Yet no commonly agreed-upon law of logic
would distinguish between those sentences. Since Chomsky has yet
to demonstrate that difference in focus is a logical difference, either
he must come up with and justify such a difference, or he must give
up the idea that focus is a matter of logical form. Similarly, consider disjointness of reference. According to the SI-i rule of disjoint
reference (179), the phrases the students and him in the sentence
The students admire him can have no referent in common. Hence,
according to Chomsky, from that sentence we can conclude that
The one whom the students admire is not one of the students. But
although one might ordinarily draw this conclusion from this sentence, the conclusion is surely not a logical consequence of the sen-

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tence, since the sentence could be true and the "conclusion" false.25
We conclude, therefore, that Chomsky must either further restrict
the domain of logical form so as to exclude disjointness of reference
or else give up the claim that the objects constructed by SI-1 rules
of grammar are logical forms.
Chomsky's innovations in syntactic theory that are presented in
Essays are as striking as his innovations in semantic theory. We have
already alluded to one of these, the "trace theory of movement
rules." Another is his elaboration of a system of "conditions on
transformations." 26 The problem that Chomsky is trying to solve
with this system is one of his own creation. After having postulated,
back in the 1950s, the existence of rules of grammar of a certain
type-syntactic transformations-to handle certain facts of language,
he found that the theory of grammar incorporating such rules is
insufficiently constrained to be of much theoretical interest. The
solution to this problem which he envisions involves the formulation of "conditions on the way the rules of grammar apply to generate structural descriptions . . . in such a way as to restrict severely
the operation of the rules of grammar while not affecting their
form" (81, 84). Moreover, if the system of conditions on application
can be made rich enough, it can then be claimed that no grammar
contains more than a very small number of very simply stated transformations. Each such rule will interact in a special way with the
system of conditions to produce a constellation of effects that serves
to identify the rule in question. In particular, the "core" of English
syntax might contain just two very simple transformations, NPMovement and wh-Movement, "each of considerably broader scope
than has hitherto been imagined" (205).27
25 Chomskyhimself acknowledges that there is something special about the
operation of the rule of disjoint reference, when he points out that violations
of the rule result in interpretations that are "strange"(Essays, p. 179); that is,
"out of the ordinary"or "unnatural."But such strangenesshas nothing to do
with logic, whose subject matter is not how people ordinarily go about drawing
conclusions from premises, but rather how conclusions validly follow from
premises.
26.Which is the title of the longest and most difficult article in Essays (pp.
81-160). The system originated in proposals made in Chomsky'smonograph
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (The Hague: Mouton, 1964),and has undergone further elaboration in a more recent paper, "On Wh-Movement,"in Peter
W. Culicover et al., eds., Formal Syntax (New York: Academic Press, 1977), pp.
71-132, but not in such a way as to materially affect what I have to say about
it here. Also see Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik, "Filters and Control,"
Linguistic Inquiry, viii, 3 (Summer1977):425-504.
27 See also "On Wh-Movement,"op. cit.

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THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

Chonisky's proposal to scale down the transformational comp11)onent, together with his proposal to eliminate the contribution of
deep structures to semantic interpretation, suggests the possibility
that EST will evolve into a theory in which deep structures and
syntactic transformations are eliminated entirely. There are several
strong hints in Essays that such a development is in the making;
for example, at one point Chomsky raises the question whether
"more extensive reliance on rules of interpretation [would] suffice
to permit us to eliminate wh-Movement in favor of [a revision in
the] expansion of [the category] COMP in the base" (157).28 And at
another point he speculates that "[i]t may be possible to devise an
alternative to transformational grammar in which rules [like NPMovement and wh-Movement] are regarded as interpretive" (206).
Certainly the ingredients for the development of this alternative
are now available to proponents of EST. One of the conditions on
transformations that Chomsky adopts, at least for such rules as NPMovement and wh-Movement, is the "structure preserving condition" of Joseph Emonds.29According to this condition, it is guaranteed that surface structures can be generated by exactly the same
phrase-structure rules that generate deep structures, up to lexical
material. Suppose then, that we eliminate deep structures entirely,
and permit the phrase-structure rules of grammar to generate surface-structure configurations directly. All that we need now suppose
is that lexical material is inserted directly into surface-structure
configurations, an assumption that is consistent with EST.30 Even
if the structure-preserving condition on transformations is not imposed, however, the set of surface structures of a language can still
be generated by a phrase-structure grammar, together with rules of
28 In a footnote to this passage, Chomsky mentions two English constructions
that he thinks it might be difficult to account for in a grammar without whMovement. I fail to see what the difficulty is. The first example is Which pictures of each other were the men looking at? If the alleged difficulty is that,
without wh-Movement, the reciprocal expression must precede its antecedent
throughout the derivation, it is not a real difficulty, since such sentences exist
independently of wh-Movement, for example Pictures of each other amused the
men. Since I do not see any other relevant difficulty in the example, I conclude
that it poses no particular problem for a grammar without wh-Movement. The
second example is the phrase the pictures of each other that the men were looking at. Here the difficulty is that the reciprocal expression is outside of the
clause containing its antecedent. But this is a difficulty that is not solved by the
assumption that wh-Movement has applied in its derivation. Hence the example,
though interesting for other reasons, is irrelevant to the question whether there
is a rule of wh-Movement in English grammar.
29 A Transformational Approach to English Syntax (New York: Academic
Press, 1976); Essays, pp. 8, 14, 87-88, 173.
30 As pointed out, for example, by Chomsky and Lasnik, op. cit.

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NOTES AND NEWS

lexical insertion, and a set of "surface exclusion filters" (143, 157) 3

that eliminate unwanted structures.
The resulting theory has much to recommend it over EST, since
it handles the same range of syntactic phenomena without the kinds
of duplications that are found in EST. For example, in EST the
"filtering" of derivations is handled not only by the surface exclusion filters, but also by the transformations themselves,32whereas in
the resulting theory filtering is carried out by the filters alone. Also,
in EST lexically unfilled nodes can arise either directly by the
failure of lexical insertion rules to fill them or indirectly by the
removal of their lexical material by transformations, whereas in the
resulting theory they arise only directly. Such nodes occur in wellformed surface structures only under the condition that they be
properly bound by identically categorized lexical material appearing elsewhere in those structures. Since the proper binding conditions need be stated only at the level of surface structure, there is
no point in introducing lexically unfilled nodes in two distinct
ways, as is done in EST.
If, however, something like the resulting theory is adopted by
Chomsky, it will be a significant departure not only from ST and
EST, but also from the entire grammatical tradition that he has
created, in which the distinction between deep and surface structure
in syntax is taken to be fundamental. In light of that tradition, the
decision to adopt it will not be easy to make.
D. TERENCE LANGENDOEN

City University of New York

NOTES AND NEWS
The editors report with deep regret the death of Grace Mead Andrus de
Laguna, Professor Emeritus at Bryn Mawr College, past vice-president
(1932) and president (1941) of the American Philosophical Association,
Eastern Division, and one of the founders of the Fullerton Philosophy
Club. Professorde Laguna taught at Bryn Mawr College from i9i6 until
her retirementin 1942. She died in Devon Manor on Feb. I7, 1978, at the
age of ninety-nine.
The first volume of Studia Cartesiana, a multidisciplinary annual devoted
to Descartesand cartesianism,will appear in 1978. Its goal is to facilitate,

through as broad an international collaboration as possible, both more

rapid diffusion of information on Cartesianresearch in progress,and a
31 See also Chomskyand Lasnik, op. cit.
32Aspects, pp. 137-139.